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This is Homeworld 2...Not Cataclysm

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 17
Date: August 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Dear Amazon Customer,

Please pay no attention to negative reviews of Homeworld 2 that are actually directed to the Homeworld expansion ...Homeworld:Cataclysm.

Homeworld was ground breaking, moving, and finely balanced for an incredible gaming experience. Nuff said... buy the first if you haven't already.

Cataclysm lacked the impact of the first but was pretty cool in its own right. I replayed one of the cataclysm missions over and over again until I could save all of the passenger ships. Cataclysm had something to be proud of also. And you know you're lying if you didn't get a giant grin every time you zapped an opponent with your beast ray online and heard their entire crew scream in agony because you knew your opponent heard the same cries on the other end. If you haven't bought cataclysm yet wait until you get bored of the first and the third (which I guarantee won't happen for a number of years)

Homeworld 2 hasn't come out yet but download the trailer (which is actually video of in game action) and you will see why I gave this game 5 stars before I have played it.

So in a couple weeks there will be three Homeworld games don't get them confused. Homeworld 2 promises to be very cool and unlike another review at amazon it IS made by Relic, the people who made the original...besides there are gonna be space marines as we know all games containing space marines are must buys.

p.s. Amazon...please remove the reviews that confuse Homeworld 2 with Homeworld Cataclysm.

Excellent Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: June 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I thought the first Homeworld was great, then i played the second one and was totally blown away. Improvements all across the board. I would not hesitate to recomend this game to anyone.

Same old Galaxy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: September 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Minimum of a PIII 833 - Recommended P4 1.4GHz. Not sure what for, they used the same engine, didn't they?

Having a beefed up machine, I expected this game to blow HW1 out of the water, but was thoroughly disappointed in this area. Other than adding a few more details to ships and making explosions more... explosive, there are no noticable improvements (other than an expansion of different types of fleets).

The plot follows similar to HW1 as well, giving the feeling, 'history repeats itself like a broken record'. In all, you feel like you're playing another expansion rather than a game created years later.

Where HW1 blew you away with more atmosphere than space actually has, HW2 seems unable to gather the feeling of being alone, with something unexpected around every nebula.
Rather, in order to try and keep you on your toes, HW2 bombards you with consisant attacks that begin to become overly repetitive and annoying within a short time.

The control method is similar with only a few changes to make it a bit simpliar. Not much to complain about it this area, other than the night sky being spoiled by green, yellow and red shapes showing where everyones ships are. Christmas tree anyone?

If you haven't played any of the Homeworlds before, you should enjoy the originality of HW2. However, though I am a strong fan of HW1 and its expansion, I have failed to pee my pants in excitment with this new production. I must admit I seem to be in the minority of opinions here, but the truth will be told if it can be (as HW1) listed as "Game of the Year".

Game of the week perhaps.

Imagine how excited you would be about Half Life 2 if they just used the same engine of HL1 but beefed it alittle. Overall, so much promise but like a wet firecracker, a quick fizzle and you begin to frown.

Worst of the series. Too Difficult.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: December 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The first 2 Homeworld games are my favorite all time games. This was unplayable for me. Even on the Easy setting I could barely get past the first couple of missions. The other games were much more relaxing and enjoyable. I found this game a complete frustration because of its difficulty. There are many other features I did not like such as the way one is just taken from 1 mission to the next without the chance to regroup.

Now the artists are working for the engineers.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: September 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've played through the original Homeworld and Cataclysm games and I've finished the first few missions of Homeworld 2.

My bottom line is that the original game looked like the engineers were working for the artists, but this game looks like the artists were working for the engineers. Here's why I say this:

First, the introductory storyline was weak.

The story line of the original Homeworld grabbed me right away. The discovery of an old starship leads to the invention of hyperspace travel which violates a little-known 4000 year old treaty and results in almost genocide by an evil empire that must be defeated if the Homeworld is to be found. Wow, I've got to help these people!

The Homeworld 2 story introduction tells of how the bad guys are following a cult leader and now they're attacking us. Did I miss something? Why should I want to help these Hiigarans survive anyway?

Oh yeah, you'd think that after the first debacle that occured when the Hiigarans launched a new mothership that they would have been a little more prepared when they launched the one in Homeworld 2.

Oh well, those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. And we who play Homeworld 2 are doomed to repeat it too because it starts the same way as Homeworld only without the compelling story line.

Second, cluttered menus and controls.

There's a lot to do in this game, and the controls are so compacted and reliant on symbols that they're hard to master. The original game had a very open and easy to use approach to research, building, etc. because there was a separate screen for each. Now it's all compacted into a control panel that makes it look like I may as well be flying an interceptor.

This trend toward cluttered menus goes right to the very buttons that are very wide and very narrow so that if you're on a high resolution screen you've really got to work to get that mouse pointer where you want it. To what end?

Third, not following simple conventions used on other RTS games.

It took me a while just to figure out how to save a game, and more time to figure out how to load it the next day.

What's wrong with having the menu come up when I hit the Escape key? Why F10? What's with "Player vs. CPU"? It's called "skirmish" in most other games. That's the accepted term. What's with the "Enable VSYNC" check box on the Video options menu? Am I just supposed to know what that means?

Finally, I'm noticing that I'm continually being interrupted with cut scenes and new objectives and micro-managing commands while I'm trying to play the game. Does this continue throughout the rest of the story? I hope not because it's annoying. Just give me an overall objective up front and let me work with it, with maybe a surprise in the middle. Then I get to be creative and have fun.

In summary, the original game came across as a vision and a labor of love that happened to be a computer game, but this comes across as a software development project with great graphics. Awesome graphics (and they are awesome) don't make up for the loss of the artistic touch that existed in the original.

Spectacular

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Homeworld has been and will continue to be a spectacle of incrediblly beautiful graphics and amazing gameplay. It will keep you entertained for months. I know that I am still playing the original after two years and love it even more than I did when I first bought it.

Disappointing and frustrating

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: November 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The original Homeworld had concept and graphics going for it, if not gameplay. Amusing, if tedious...I remember setting things in motion and literally going away to eat lunch, then returning to see how it was proceeding. Homeworld 2 has exactly the same concept, noticeably improved graphics, a modified interface, and abysmal gameplay. Those who enjoy RTS titles and play games for enjoyment--and is there any other rationale?--will be frustrated beyond tolerance by H2. Long missions with multiple objectives, wave after wave of too powerful opposing units, inadequate resources, intrusive cutscenes and no provision for adjusting difficulty settings remove most of any sense of fun and adventure. With more imagination in the design and testing, this could have been a worthwhile successor to the original. Instead, you will either find yourself searching out cheat codes--which remove any point to playing a game--or uninstalling without finishing. Despite the many negative reviews, if you are still tempted to try this title wait for the reduced price jewel case version.

Lazy voice acting, extremely dense UI, uninvolving gameplay... Homeworld 2 just didn't work out

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: April 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm not an expert of Homeworld series, I've never played any of the games other than this one, and I know nothing about the storyline. The intro video for Homeworld 2 really told me nothing more than these people called Hiigarans have found these things called "Cores", which an evil man wants for himself, and so he attacks and destroys many colonies of the Hiigarans because they won't give them up. I wish I could tell more, but that is literally all that the intro movie tells you.

Leaving it to more Homeworld-literate and informed reviewers to point out the flaws more in-depth, I'll simply tell from my point of view.

The User Interface is an utter mess of details and menus and submenus and obscurely shaped objects without labels that you have to figure out what they do by clicking them. It's incredibly difficult to deal with, and you have to figure out what the wire-frames of each individual ship is, otherwise you'll never figure out what ships you've selected in space, because they aren't labeled unless you hover your mouse over them.

The gameplay is terribly uninvolving. Due to the clunky controls, sight is a luxury not well spent on your own forces. Scrolling tends to go either too far in or too far away. You're either watching the ships too closely, or so far away you can't tell what they're doing. Another irritating feature is in cases of emergency, when you have to rush your ships over to enemies, is that you must click for them to attack the enemy as they zip past, because if you miss, your cursor will get stuck in a two-dimensional movement circle which essentially forces you to move the ship somewhere on its same plane in only two dimensions. Pressing escape resolves this, but it's still a severe deterrent in emergency situations.

The tutorial goes from baby-easy, to completely batnuts insanely difficult, as you go from one mission where you fight off a few enemy bombers pestering your Mothership, to fending off meager attacks on your transports, to suddenly encountering a fleet of several frigates, dozens and dozens and dozens of fighters and bombers, and only seconds after you're supposed to destroy the enemy half the map away in a resource field.

As the final sampling, the voice acting. Aside from the female voice of the Hiigaran leader, it seems they only hired one man to do the voices for all the ships and characters. And he does all of them in the exact same voice, lazy and monotone, even when his characters are about to die, sacrificing themselves to save you.

All in all, I couldn't believe how intolerably flawed this game was. It's just plain... bad. I've never played any of the other Homeworld games, but I hope the first is better than this one.

Basically a game box rail game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: December 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm a big fan of both HW1 and Cataclysm. Both are enjoyable, paced well, and actually beatable.

With that said, after reading many reviews here I decided to download the demo and see how bad the latest release is.

Well, if you like stunning graphics and atmosphere, then it's incredible. If you want enjoyable game play and strategy, forget it.

See HW2 fell off the wagon when they decided to treat it like a "port to PC" game. It's more like a game box rail shooter, auto-save, rampant attacks, little time to explore, gain knowledge, build. It's just point and click, shoot to kill. It got so bad I expected to get secret codes to get to the next level like a Nintendo game boy title.

Sorry Relic, you should have tweaked the engine and AI and improved the graphics and stopped there. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Keep it straight

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let's clear something up here. Homeworld Cataclysm is not Homeworld2, and it's not an expansion, either, it's stand-alone. Cataclysm is the one with the Beast, Homeworld2 is the one with the Vaygr that hasn't even been released yet. Too many people are posting reviews for Cataclysm here, which is for Homeworld2. Go to the Cataclysm review sites, not this one. It kinda confuses some people.

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